Walls of Coal in Zinkeland: A puppet in a cowboy hat

Well, the last few days have gotten a bit more interesting in Zinkeland. There are statements about the feasibility of wall along the border, giant walls of coal have been erected on the BLM website and very tiny checks from very tiny hands have been handed out to the Department of the Interior.

“Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is one of the people backing off from this promise. Nonwall options, such as electronic sensors, will have to be considered in some places, he said. You see, “the border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall.”

Not only that, but where would we locate it? “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall?” Zinke asked. “We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.” The Mexicans won’t invite us to erect the structure on their side. So siting may be a problem.”

To give you a glimpe on what this looks like on the map:

The U.S. – Mexican border going straight through Amistad International Reservoir.The U.S. – Mexican border going directly through Falcon Lake.The U.S. – Mexican border following the Rio Grande for hundreds of miles.

We initially heralded that brief glimpse of realism coming from the administration, but it didn’t last very long.

Mere days later, our favorite press secretary Spicey McSpicester announced that Trump was donating his first 10 weeks of salary to the NPS. That’s $77,000 of chump change for an agency slated for a budget reduction of $1.5 billion.

Trump is proposing deep cuts to the Interior Department, which includes the Park Service. The president’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year would trim $1.5 billion or 12 percent from the department’s budget. Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to determine how much money the department can spend.

The Sierra Club called this a publicity stunt. We agree. The amount donated doesn’t even fully fund one round of repairs for a boardwalk along one of the geyser basins of Yellowstone National Park.

But I’m going a bit further here and I think that Trump (or his handlers) read Zinke’s statement on the wall and hated it. They ordered him to the White House and presented him with this check as a form of public humiliation and to shut him up. Because that’s exactly what they would do.

Of course, while Trump might be annoyed at Zinke’s statement about the wall, Zinke dances beautifully after Trump’s fiddle is when it comes to coal.

Who the actual fuck believes coal is the future, has a future or can be clean. And who wants to go back working in a coal mine. Not to mention the vast majority of coal mining jobs have been rendered irrelevant dup to technological progress.

Zinc, of course, thinks it’s cool:

“The United States has more coal than any other nation on earth, and we are lucky to be at a time in our history that we have the technology available to responsibly mine coal and return our land to equal or better quality after,” said Zinke.

I love how his statement starts with “U.S.A. #1, U.S.A. #1.
I believe we also have a pretty good supply of wind and sun… but I guess we just let the rest of the world lead this planet into the future while we’re going back to the dark ages. Splendid. These asshats have no common sense and are only concerned about pleasing their dying industry friends.

Finally, over the last 24 hrs, the Twitterverse was up in arms about the horribly picture that was on the Bureau of Land Management’s homepage: